What a disappointment! Being an enthusiastic, voracious, and eclectic reader, I have rarely experienced such failed expectations. Given the rich backdrop of our history (WWII through the Civil Rights era with a nod toward the coming feminist movement), I found he lack of character development disappointing and somewhat astonishing. With that kind of tapestry, what I encountered were poorly-rendered sketches of characters rather than the rich portraiture I felt could have been - and the characters never moved off the canvas for me. Some of the sentences are lovely, and I happen to enjoy the "switchback" chronology the author employs, both in books and film, but I continued reading on awaiting a sense of satisfaction/recognition/empathy which never came. I was left in the final pages with an overwhelming sense of "Is that all there is?" I felt the original story line was terrific, and I frankly expected to receive a heavy tome in the mail - so perhaps it is a case of taking on too much. At any rate, given the potential, I have to rate this one a "2", which I've not done before.

This book is a love story - not only from the standpoint of a wife/mother of a couple who were beautiful and wealthy "golden children" of the Brahmin upper classes in that sparkling segment of 1930's America, but of fierce introspection and courageous change and transcendence.

It's the story of the maternal devotion of an impeccably educated and dynamic mother who creates a necessary parallel universe for herself and her four gifted children, whose safety she guards tenaciously from their larger-than-life father, himself pursued by compulsively destructive demons.

Before words like "codependence" and "enabling" and "enmeshment" and "emotional abandonment" were part of our everyday vocabulary, Sally Ryder Brady was leading a life in which her natural and very considerable resourcefulness equipped her to survive all the above, while projecting a montage of secure and happy family life which dazzled observers.

Her brilliant and handsome husband - who appears to have been the quintessential Renaissance Man - harbored dark secrets. Sally literally uncovered them after his death.

Her time of grieving not only the loss of her charismatic husband to death - but of the "dream" which their marriage had embodied in its external glamour to others - and to Sally - portrays an intensely courageous and personal journey and metamorphosis during which Sally "comes home to herself".

This book was written and published with uncommon bravery; it has beautiful prose and dialogue which captivates from page one. I would thoroughly recommend it for book groups. A favorite book for me of the past decade.